Serebii.net, also known as SPP (Serebii's Pokémon Page), is a fan site created by Serebii in the fall of 1999, when many Pokémon sites were quickly starting to appear. The site first gained popularity as a GeoCities site, where it was also a member of the Articuno Island network. The site also had a close affiliation with the short lived Pokémon Official Magazine in the UK.

It is a well known source for anime and games information. The website is updated on an almost daily basis. A popular feature of the site is the "Pokéarth", a complete listing of all in-game Trainers and catchable Pokémon in every city and route.

Serebii.net's name is taken from the romanized Japanese name for Celebi. The Pokémon also serves as the site's mascot.

Contents

History

The original SPP was established in October 1999 as a GeoCities site, as a result of lunchtime website design sessions between Serebii and a friend. While initially not as prominent as site like The Pokémasters, UPN and the original Bulbagarden, Serebii soon began to gain popularity, and, by 2002, after becoming Serebii.net, became one of the most visible Pokémon fansites. It eventually eclipsed the remaining older fansites in terms of popularity and activity.

Originally, Serebii.net was hosted for free on a large variety of servers as it grew. However, once Serebii's popularity exploded, these servers proved inadequate, resulting in frequent downtime. As a result, in 2003, Ledian_X introduced Craig Maloof to Serebii, who made an offer to pay for Serebii's server costs. Since that time, Serebii.net has been hosted on Craig's own private servers, with the hosting bills apparently being paid for via the single Google AdWords banner on every page of the site and forums.

In early 2006, after the site had made enough excess to pay Craig back for the time he personally funded the servers, it was decided to move the site onto servers under the sole control of Serebii, with assistance from ricocheting, a person who had helped Craig run his servers in the past.

Controversy

Serebii.net has occasionally been the center of controversy, as its webmaster has faced accusations of content theft in the past. Serebii, the owner, claims that he has not personally stolen any site content since mid-2002. Serebii has stated that any incident since then has been the result of the work of unscrupulous fans passing stolen material along to him.

Serebii.net is very protective over its own content, and until 2011, a Javascript code prevented right clicking on all pages of the site in order to prevent content theft.